Identity Education: A Conceptual Framework for Educational Researchers and Practitioners

Abstract

This article presents the concept of identity education (IdEd) referring to the purposeful involvement of educators with students’ identity-related processes or contents. We discuss why educators may consider identity important to the realization of educational goals and choose to target aspects of students’ identity in their pedagogical practice. We offer a broad theoretical framework that organizes and focuses the extensive yet scattered discourse on identity and education. Because IdEd is a concept that accommodates diverse educational perspectives and concerns, we outline several parameters that can assist educators in making sense of this diversity and provide a conceptual basis for pedagogical and curricular decision making. These parameters also provide researchers from different scholarly traditions a common framework for constructive dialogue and can serve as a basis for generating focused and productive research directions.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Elli Schachter's work on this study was supported by a grant from the Israeli Science Foundation (#818/07). Yisrael Rich's work was supported by a grant from the Chief Scientist's Office and the Department of Religious Education of the Israeli Ministry of Education.

Notes

In the English translation of Lamm's work from Hebrew, acculturation was used rather than enculturation. However, to avoid confusion with contemporary usage of acculturation we use the latter term.